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April 29, 2014 - Child Care Payment Update

4/29/2014

Child care providers offer a vital service for working parents and we know how critical it is for them to receive payments from the state on a regular basis. We at IDHS are taking extraordinary measures to expedite the payments that were delayed as a result of the switch to the new Child Care Management System launched on January 14, 2014, and to keep providers informed on the progress of payments. We are also working hard on correcting payment errors that have occurred in recent weeks.

IDHS and Action for Children have a special Hotline to call for Cook County providers who are facing financial hardship due to delayed payments. The number is 877-581-3691. The hotline is staffed by Action for Children.

To find out when your payment was entered, you can use 800-804-3833. That number will usually tell of entered payments the working day after entry, approval of a payment the working day following the approval, and generally will tell about issue of a payment two working days after the issue. Licensed providers must enter the IVR case numbers to hear information on their payments. Please refer to the most recent child care certificate or other child care case information for the IVR number.

If you have a question regarding a redetermination, approval, address change, certificate needed, the number of days entered in for a payment, and many other questions, you will need to contact your child care office that takes care of your case. Also, contact the child care office that handles the case for any payment that was issued but was not received, or for those returned undeliverable to The Office of the Comptroller.

It appears MOST of the problem payments entered in February, March, and early April that were held up because of technical issues, were fixed last week. MOST of these problem payments became approved around April 17th, and issued soon after. However, there was still a small portion of these problem payments that need additional work to approve. MOST of the payments still needing additional work should be approved by DHS within the next couple days.

For this program, we draw our Federal Child Care funds in the middle of the month each month which allows us to approve and issue the majority of the payments. Some months we still have funds from the previous month that allow us to approve some payments early in the current month. Some of the payments with an entry date up to April 24th should be approved by DHS on Monday April 28th. Funding should remain available for at least the remainder of April; so many more payments will be approved in the next couple days. For payments entered at the start of May, it should be very similar to most months. Some funding may be available early in May to approve some early entries. Otherwise, most payments entered in May won't start to be approved until our funding becomes available around May 15th.

**For issued payments, many payments approved by DHS on April 23rd were issued by The Office of the Comptroller on Friday night April 25th. More payments should be issued late this week as funding continues for a little while longer.

We realize there are some isolated problems with approved and issued payments lately that did not calculate correctly. DHS is working to identify why the problems occurred. A resolution and a reimbursement process were mailed earlier this month. The letter that was mailed can also be viewed on the DHS web site of: www.dhs.state.il.us. For those payments that had incorrect co-pay deduction, DHS hopes to have the adjustment added to the first payment entered after April 30th, but that has not been confirmed yet.

The child care payment process is 3 Steps. Your payment is entered into the child care system, when funding is available, and the system has no errors the payment is approved by DHS. After the payment is approved, generally the payment will be issued by The Office of the Comptroller 1-3 working days after the approval. Paper checks are mailed the next working day after being issued. Direct Deposit and debit card payments are in accounts 2 working days after issue.